8 Things You Didn’t Know About PETA

1) PETA Kills Animals: According to government documents, PETA employees have killed more than 33,000 dogs, cats, puppies, and kittens since 1998. This behavior continues despite PETA’s moralizing about the “unethical” treatment of animals by farmers, scientists, restaurant owners, circuses, hunters, fishermen, zookeepers, and countless other Americans. PETA puts to death up to 97.4 percent of the animals in its care in any given year, including those it accepts from members of the public who expect the group to make a reasonable attempt to find them adoptive homes. A site visit by a Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services staff veterinarian concluded, “The findings of this site visit support the assertion that PETA does not operate a facility that meets the statutory definition of an animal shelter as the primary purpose is not to find permanent adoptive homes for animals.”

2) PETA Believes in Total Animal Liberation: PETA president and co-founder Ingrid Newkirk has described her group’s overall goal as “total animal liberation.” This means the complete abolition of meat, milk, cheese, eggs, honey, zoos, aquariums, circuses, wool, leather, fur, silk, hunting, fishing, and pet ownership. In a 2003 profile of Newkirk in The New Yorker, author Michael Specter wrote that Newkirk has had at least one seeing-eye dog taken away from its blind owner. PETA is also against all medical research that requires the use of animals, including research aimed at curing AIDS and cancer.

3) PETA Supports Criminals: PETA has given tens of thousands of dollars to convicted arsonists and other violent criminals. This includes a 2001 donation of $1,500 to the North American Earth Liberation Front (ELF), an FBI-certified “domestic terrorist” group responsible for dozens of firebombs and death threats. During the 1990s, PETA paid $70,200 to Rodney Coronado, an Animal Liberation Front (ALF) serial arsonist convicted of burning down a Michigan State University research laboratory. In his sentencing memorandum, a federal prosecutor implicated PETA president Ingrid Newkirk in that crime. Former PETA vegetarian campaign coordinator and animal liberation movement leader Bruce Friedrich told an animal rights convention that “blowing stuff up and smashing windows” is “a great way to bring about animal liberation,” adding, “Hallelujah to the people who are willing to do it.”

4) PETA Lobbies to Kill Cats (But Save Pigs): Despite its animal protection rhetoric, PETA’s approach to dealing with some animals—particularly stray cats—is often lethal. (The Audubon Society estimates that there are upwards of 60 million stray cats nationwide.) In cities, towns, and counties across the nation, PETA advocates against trap-neuter-return programs. PETA claims that it is somehow “more humane” to kill cats immediately rather than to fix them and release them to live their lives. However, when the wild or feral animals can hurt humans or human interests—like feral pigs or rampant deer that cause fecal pollution and property destruction—PETA demands non-lethal “solutions.”

5) PETA Targets Kids With Violent Propaganda: PETA activists regularly target children as young as six years old with anti-meat and anti-milk propaganda, even waiting outside their schools to intercept them without notifying their parents. One piece of kid-targeted PETA literature tells small children: “Your Mommy Kills Animals!” PETA has bragged that its messages reach over 1.2 million minor children, including 30,000 kids between the ages of 6 and 12, all contacted by e-mail without parental supervision. One PETA vice president told the Fox News Channel’s audience: “Our campaigns are always geared towards children, and they always will be.”

6) PETA is Against All Medical Research That Involves Animals: PETA’s president has said that “even if animal research resulted in a cure for AIDS, we would be against it.” PETA has repeatedly attacked research foundations like the March of Dimes, the Pediatric AIDS Foundation, and the American Cancer Society, solely because they support animal-based research aimed at curing life-threatening diseases and birth defects. And PETA helped to start and initially manage a quasi-medical front group, the misnamed Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, to attack medical research head-on.

7) PETA Twists Religion to Get Attention: PETA has compared Jewish victims of the Nazi Holocaust to farm animals and Jesus to pigs. PETA’s religious campaigns include a website that claims—despite ample evidence to the contrary—that Jesus was a vegetarian. PETA holds protests at houses of worship, even suing one church that tried to protect its members from Sunday-morning harassment. Its billboards taunt Christians with the message that hogs “died for their sins.” PETA insists, contrary to centuries of rabbinical teaching, that the Jewish ritual of kosher slaughter shouldn’t be allowed. And its infamous “Holocaust on Your Plate” campaign crassly compared the Jewish victims of Nazi genocide to farm animals. An original leader of the campaign now works for a different animal liberation group, the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS).

8) PETA Uses Hypocritical Celebrities: PETA frequently looks the other way when its celebrity spokespersons don’t practice what it preaches. As gossip bloggers and Hollywood journalists have noted, Pamela Anderson’s Dodge Viper (auctioned to benefit PETA) had a “luxurious leather interior”; Porn star and PETA supporter Jenna Jameson was photographed fishing, slurping oysters, and wearing a leather jacket just weeks after launching an anti-leather campaign for PETA; Morrissey got an official “okay” from PETA after eating at a steakhouse; Dita von Teese has written about her love of furs and foie gras; Steve-O built a career out of abusing small animals on film; the officially “anti-fur” Eva Mendes often wears fur anyway; and Charl
ize Theron’s celebrated October 2007 Vogue cover shoot featured several suede garments. In 2008, “Baby Phat” designer Kimora Lee Simmons became a PETA spokesmodel despite working with fur and leather, after making a $20,000 donation to the animal rights group.